ABSTRACT
This chapter explores nationalism's persistent grip on modern democratic politics. It has both good news and bad for those interested in defending cultural pluralism within modern democracies. Nationalism is better understood as drawing on a belief that nations should have the final say or sovereignty over the organization of their political lives, rather than as the more familiar principle demanding the congruence of national and political boundaries. Nationalism tells us to value national loyalties and make the state the servant of the nation. Human life is lived in a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes competing group loyalties. The fact of communal pluralism supports recent efforts to develop more complex and sometimes multi-national forms of federalism in Western Europe and North America. A nation is best understood as what is called a "cultural heritage" community, rather than more simply as a cultural community.
